Anxities Of The 21st Century: Mechanisms Of Influence On Fertility

Abstract

A series of crises in the 21st century is giving a fresh impetus to study the short-term mechanisms of demographic changes. Descriptions of the set of such mechanisms substantially compliment the explanations of fertility changes based on one main mechanism emphasized by theories of second demographic transition or dividend of gender equity. This article compares the mechanisms linking anxiety and uncertainty with fertility in the countries of Visegrad group, Scandinavian countries, and Russia. Unlike Visegrad countries, in which fertility was procyclical from the early 1990s until the late 2010s, in Scandinavian countries recovery after great recession was unexpectedly accompanied by dramatic fertility decline. The most adequate explanations of Scandinavian phenomenon are precarization of the work and the emergence of new source of anxiety associated not so much with current situation as with life prospects. In Russia fluctuations in birth rates from the early 1980s to the mid-2010s were caused by economic busts and booms, and the measures of demographic policy. The low fertility in the very end of the 2010s, running counter upward trend of real wage in this period, introduces new features in this mechanism and, perhaps, has something in common with Scandinavian phenomenon. Studying influence of employment precarization and social media on fertility is important to develop demographic and family policy in Russia.